The Corporate Boat Race

An American automobile company and a Japanese auto company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be. The Japanese team won by a mile.
Afterwards, the American team became discouraged by the loss and their morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A continuous measurable improvement team of "Executives" was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend appropriate corrective action. Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the American team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering. The American Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to do a study on the management structure. After some time and billions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough rowing." To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the management structure was changed to 4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers, and 1 Staff Steering Manager and a new performance system for the person rowing the boat to give more incentive to work harder and become a six sigma performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment." That ought to do it. The next year the Japanese team won by two miles. The American Corporation laid off the rower for poor performance, sold all of the paddles, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded high performance awards to the consulting firm, and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives.

Job Interview

Employer to applicant: "In this job we need someone who is responsible." Applicant: "I'm the one you want. On my last job, every time anything went wrong, they said I was responsible."

Quotes of Companies

Here are some of the submissions of actual comments, notices, and statements coming out of different companies:

• As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
• What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.
• How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
• E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.
• This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it.
• Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them.
• My boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected.
• Quote from the boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what 'I' say."
• My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said,"That would be better for me."
• We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.
• We recently received a memo from senior management saying, This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above."
• One day my boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!"
• As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR Director's office, and was told that the executive VP wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired, with the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR Manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send to my boss, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out, directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation letter by pasting words together from the Sunday paper.